by Madeleine Hubbard
Rep. Ilhan Omar says there is “no way in hell” that she will attend Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s joint address to Congress and that he should not even be invited to speak.
“There is no way in hell I am attending the joint session address from a President whose country has banned me and denied @RashidaTlaib the ability to see her grandma,” Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, tweeted Wednesday.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Omar are the first Muslim women elected to Congress and they are both vocal critics of Israel, the only Democracy in the Middle East.
They were scheduled to visit the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2019, but the Israeli government under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blocked them from coming on the grounds that they have called to boycott Israel. One day after issuing the ban, Israel said Tlaib could visit her family in the West Bank on humanitarian grounds, but she said she still would not go.
“WE SHOULD NOT BE INVITING THE PRESIDENT OF ISRAEL—A GOVERNMENT WHO UNDER ITS CURRENT PRIME MINISTER BARRED THE FIRST TWO MUSLIM WOMEN ELECTED TO CONGRESS FROM VISITING THE COUNTRY—TO GIVE A JOINT ADDRESS TO CONGRESS,” Omar also tweeted Wednesday in all capital letters.
In the Twitter thread, she also said that Herzog’s visit “comes during the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank in history, immediately following Israel’s largest incursion into the occupied West Bank in two decades, one that flattened city blocks, and killed at least a dozen people.”
Palestinian Islamic Jihad said at least five of their fighters died during the raid, which Israel launched in response to an increase in terror attacks.
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Madeleine Hubbard is an international correspondent for Just the News. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.
Photo “Issac Herzog” by Avi Ohayon / Government Press Office. CC BY-SA 3.0.
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